


a thing with feathers

by Idhren



Category: To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Genre: Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:36:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Idhren/pseuds/Idhren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Scout goes by Jean Louise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CG (NYCScribbler)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NYCScribbler/gifts).



> _To Kill a Mockingbird_ is one of those books that sinks into your bones and provides a baseline ever after. My sincere thanks to the author, Nelle Harper Lee, who still lives to this day in Monroeville, Alabama; to Charles J. Shields, who wrote Nelle's biography, 'Mockingbird', from which some details of Jean Louise's adult characterization are drawn; and to my amazing betas, Stultiloquentia and especially Kate Nepveu, without whom this story would not have life, let alone wings.

In the years after the war, Jem rarely talked about how he earned his Purple Heart. He gave me his brown leather bombardier's jacket on the spot the afternoon I showed him I could too shoot like Atticus, and we considered the matter closed. 

My roommate Helen Anne teased me about wearing the jacket so often; she said even lady welders had more finishing touches than I. It seems silly to me to fuss over curling my hair and coloring my lips on a daily basis, but I have learned a modicum of tact since my undergraduate days: if I turn on the hose of common sense too strong, I risk dousing good will I might need later. I told her that a reputation for eccentricity is the best finishing touch a writer can acquire, apart from the requisite Unhappy Childhood and small town background. She laughed.

Helen Anne carries her own memories of the war close: a silver cigarette lighter delicately engraved with her initials and ‘Paris, 1945’. She can talk for hours about her assignment there as a nurse, which by her stories consisted entirely of typing, dancing, flirting, and day trips to the countryside. I don’t begrudge her the happy memories, which grow and grow in the retelling. My brother came home from the war; hers did not.


	2. Chapter 2

I first met Helen Anne on the Crescent to New York City. I had boarded at Tuscaloosa, she at Baltimore. We got to Philadelphia before she observed, casual as could be, that the gentleman across the aisle must be missing his wife dearly. I glanced over to see that in his sleep, the older man had begun to nuzzle his bag in an overly familiar manner. I looked back at the stranger next to me, and saw Dill's own mischief dancing in her eyes.

Her irreverence loosened my tongue, and I soon learned that my own plans were not as unusual as Aunt Alexandra would have had me believe. Helen Anne had no room prearranged, nor copious funds to live it large in the big city; she was striking out on her own, and damn traditional expectations of marrying young and leaving the workforce early. I liked her spirit, and liked too the idea of sharing housing for a time while we settled in. 

New York was crowded beyond belief: even the streets were constantly full of cars, and I would soon earn more than my fair share of tickets for walking oblivious into oncoming traffic. I found secretarial work quickly enough; it sufficed to pay rent and groceries, and give me time for my real work of writing. For her part, Helen Anne drew on friends of friends to find a position as an assistant in a local photography studio; she devoted her free time to thoroughly exploring the local bars and trying to convince me to join her. “Just once, Jean Louise! Who knows, you might even find someone worth _typing_ about.”


	3. Chapter 3

In the smoky air of a late-night hangout, veterans are not as easy to pick out as Helen Anne would claim. True, most of the more confident men have served, and there is a certain seriousness to how much they drink and their boldness in indicating interest, but the quiet man at the end of the bar may have seen more horrors in his time than the braggart at the darts. There was more mixing than I was used to, rowdy Irish in one corner, some negroes scattered throughout, but otherwise it was men and women enacting the same old story as everywhere else.

I stuck near to my friend, and listened more than I spoke. One drink down, and another in my hand to make talking easier. Helen Anne has grown more serious herself of late, enough to draw me from my typewriter to investigate. She met someone here last week, and seen him three times more since. Uncharacteristically, she has refused to give me more details than ‘veteran’ and ‘pilot’ until I meet this Sidney myself. I wonder who has caught her eye, and what there is to him to keep her coming back.

I have just started on my third drink when Helen Anne tugs my sleeve in excitement. “Sidney!” she calls, and at first my eye skips right over him in favor of a stout white man who looks up briefly at her call. 

But Sidney Curtis is not white. He is tall, slim, and wearing a brown leather jacket just like the one Jem gave me, and he is as black as one of Calpurnia’s sons. I manage to return his polite, “Ladies,” with a weak smile, and get my surprise under control with ruthless discipline. I have Aunt Alexandra to thank for that, and wouldn’t she be howling if she knew I had a friend sweet on a black man. I understand Helen Anne’s reticence much better now. It may not be illegal here in New York, but back in Dixie I know all too well what she is risking. What he is risking, if he returns her interest. By the way Helen Anne tucks herself into this Sidney's side, I think that interest is given.

“Mr. Curtis, my friend tells me you were a pilot in the war,” I venture.

“It’s Lt. Curtis, miss, but as a friend of Helen here I insist you call me Sidney.” He watches me carefully to see how I take that, and I relax almost without thinking. I owe my friend better than to go comparing her to Mayella Ewell. 

“Sidney, as a friend of Helen’s, you must call me Jean Louise.”

Sidney smiled then, slow and warm, and I think I saw him then as Helen Anne sees him. He led us over to a nearby table, and introduced me around to his friends, some black like him and some white, all fellow airmen. They obviously knew Helen Anne, and were kindly attentive to me as well. I was content to let my friend take the beauty’s share of their increasingly outrageous compliments so that I could get a better sense of them as individuals, making mental notes for later.

Ever since coming here, I have been writing short stories about my childhood, about the things I miss in this cold Yankee city. Story after story, and barely worth the paper I typed them on. I have been avoiding the stories I have that are all mixed up with things I do not miss, events I have not spoken of since before the war. In this company, it hurts less to remember. In this company, I almost think I might find the words to finally put the past in its place.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] a thing with feathers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/685407) by [readbyjela (jelazakazone)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jelazakazone/pseuds/readbyjela)




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